Last fall, Governor Terry McAuliffe said the threat of a government shutdown shouldn't be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations over the health care law. Now, he and the Democrats in the Virginia Senate are holding Virginia's budget hostage to Obamacare, threatening to hold up funding for our teachers, schools, firefighters, police officers and local governments. This is wrong! Virginia should pass a clean budget with no strings attached. The debate for expanding Medicaid under Obamacare should be a separate issue.

I urge you to contact Governor McAuliffe, your Senator and your Delegate to ask them to stop holding the budget hostage to Medicaid expansion. If you don’t know who your Senator is you can find out here.

The Medicaid expansion has been touted as a way to get “free” money to help underserved Virginians. We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Accepting whatever Federal taxpayer funds Virginia would receive would only be for a maximum of 3 years and then Virginia would be required to take up the slack to the tune of billions of dollars. The federal government is hemorrhaging money and even if I thought expansion of Medicaid were a good idea I do not believe adding to our national debt is in the best interest of any Virginian.

Medicaid is already the largest expenditure that Virginia has in its budget. If we were to take on the additional costs associated with this expansion taxes would have to be raised and reductions would have to be made to important programs like transportation, education and many others.

Some Democrats have insisted that if the Federal government were to stop paying their share of the funding for expansion that Virginia is always free to back out. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no provision in the Obamacare law or in the regulations promulgated since then that would allow any state to back out of this contract.

In addition to all of this Medicaid is currently riddled with fraud. Last year Virginia Democrats agreed to defer any action with regard to Medicaid expansion until action was taken by the Medicaid Innovation and Reform Commission and now they are going back on that pledge. States that have undertaken reforms have found millions of dollars in fraud. If we fix the broken system there will be additional funds to help those who actually need it without expansion or taking on this additional burden for Virginia taxpayers.

Please contact Governor McAuliffe, your Senator and Delegate to urge them not to support Medicaid expansion in the budget!

My latest ad outlining the misrepresentations my opponent and Terry McAuliffe are putting out about my legislation! The legislation is HB1, the so-called Personhood Bill that State Sen. Charles Colgan (D., Manassas) and I pre-filed in the 2012 session of the Virginia General Assembly so parents could recover ?wrongful death? damages if their pre-born child was killed in an accident. The House of Delegates approved the bill, 66-32, but it died in the State Senate. Please share with your friends!

MANASSAS, Va. - Delegate Bob Marshall will refer to scripture when explaining his anti-abortion beliefs. But the longtime Virginia lawmaker says he wants to set the record straight about a published report claiming he said God punishes some women who've had abortions by inflicting their subsequent children with disabilities.

"Wrong. Never happened. I don't believe that," Marshall told Fox 5 News in an exclusive interview in his hometown of Manassas Tuesday night.

The Republican has represented the Manassas area in the Virginia House of Delegates for 19 years. And he's an unabashed opponent of abortion.

"A child, whether it's wanted or unwanted, planned, unplanned, born in birth, not born in birth, is a result of sexual assault, is perfect or is disabled, is precious in the sight of God," Marshall proclaims.

It was during a news conference last Thursday announcing legislation to end state funding for Planned Parenthood that Marshall made the following statement: "The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion who have handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children."

Marshall blames a Virginia Commonwealth University student journalist who attended that news conference for twisting his words in a blog posting.

"I never mention God punishing women," Marshall told us. "I talked about 'nature's vengence' and I regret those terms. I should have said 'natural consequences.' It's just like somebody who drinks alcohol to excess and gets a liver problem. You can't blame God for that. You did it to yourself."

A medical researcher by profession, Marshall cites numerous studies to back up his claims that abortions can have serious medical consequences.

See the NewsEdge report of our one-on-one interview with Delegate Marshall by clicking the video tab.

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."